Friday, February 22, 2008

This otherworldly creature was among a haul of strange new fish trawled from the bottom of the oceans of Antarctica.

The eelpout Pachycara cousinsi is one of six previously unknown deep-sea fishes caught at depths of 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) during a British research expedition to the remote Crozet Islands in the Indian Ocean between Antarctica and Africa.

Team member Nicola King of the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, recently announced the new species.

P. cousinsi is known from just a single, 1.35 foot (41 centimeter) long specimen caught during the 2005 to 2006 voyage. King named the fleshy-lipped species in honor of her fiancé, geophysicist Michael Cousins.